Elephant Seals and Other Adventures

Caught this picture of an Elephant Seal with my Canon Camera from a distance.

Our son Shawn caught this picture of us, trying to look like busy campground hosts?

Our campground host job continues to be pretty laid back with our main responsibility being to lock the day use bathrooms at night. We kiddingly say that we need to do one "good deed" a day. Sometimes it's picking up some litter, giving folks directions to a trail, or lately we've done a lot of clearing of fallen limbs, etc. from the trails due to the recent stormy weather, but a couple of weeks ago we were each, separately involved in reuniting "lost" family members. One day Rob was sitting outside in the sun when a woman came walking by using a walker. She asked if he had seen her husband and gave Rob a brief description. Rob said he had seen a man matching that description about 10 minutes earlier and he offered to go look for him. He took the gator and located a man about a 1/2 mile away and Rob told him his wife was looking for him. He replied that he was looking for his wife and he accepted Rob's offer of a ride in the gator to reunite them. The couple has been married for 68 years and are in their 90s. They walk in the park frequently and we have talked with the wife several times since. They usually walk separately in two different areas of the park, but on the day they got "lost" they had broken with their usual routine. The day after Rob reunited that couple I was walking alone on a trail about 3/4 of a mile from camp when a woman with a bicycle and a little boy recognized my volunteer vest and said the little boy had come up to her and her husband and told them he was lost. She stayed with the boy while her husband went on ahead to try to find his parents. I was able to call the ranger and the family was eventually reunited. The boys father was looking for him a mile away going in the opposite direction. The boy was 7 and said he'd been riding his bicycle and that he left it "nearby" and started walking. After the ranger arrived to hang out with the boy until his father arrived I went looking for the bicycle that was about 1/4 mile away, not all that "nearby."

Today the campground has reopened after being closed for almost two months due to COVID. There are no campers tonight, but we expect to see some soon and then we'll have a little more responsibility, but this is still a pretty easy gig, living and "working" in this beautiful slice of nature.

A tree across the trail that came down in a windstorm a couple of weeks ago. I had cleared many other branches off the trail, but this one looked like it would require a chain saw.

But Rob thought he could cut it with the brush saw.

He did it, but it wasn't easy to cut through the 8" or so thick log.

Once the log was cut we were able together to move the two sections off the trail.

Our youngest granddaughter, Naomi, turned 5 last week and she told her parents that for her birthday she wanted to go camping, so she and her sister and parents joined us last Saturday night for her outdoor birthday celebration.

Five year old Naomi riding a bigger bicycle than the last time she was here.

She's quite the fearless bike rider and adventurer.

Here are Naomi and her big sister Sophia ready for exploring "Unicorn Canyon" nearby.

Naomi crossing a log that looked pretty precarious to me. She made it across twice, but the third time she was over confident and slipped off. Fortunately she "bounced" well.

Sophia helping her little sister climb up the bank.

Sophia standing at the base of a very big redwood tree.

Notice the hole at the base of the tree to her left?

Sophia climbing in the hole with Naomi ready to follow.

Neither their parents nor I attempted to go in this tree.

The girls little hips barely made it through the opening.

Here is a Stellar Jay cleaning up some oatmeal spilled on the ground by the girls the day before.

We have not seen many Stellar Jays in our campsite. They are real opportunists, looking for scraps of food left behind, and since we don't eat often outside they don't find us very interesting.

The first Robin we have seen in the park thus far.

This one was right across the road/trail from our campsite on the top of the stop sign.

A turkey vulture flying in the sky when we were out hiking.

I really admire these large scavenger birds that are perfectly designed for cleaning up dead animals.

On our "day off" on Monday we drove to Point Reyes National Seashore to see the lighthouse and the Elephant Seals. The forecast was for a very windy day, and it definitely was out on the point. We had a hard time walking in the wind, but we enjoyed the beautiful and dramatic scenery.

Looking down at the Point Reyes Light House. The stairs down to it and the nearby visitor center are closed due to COVID, but we still enjoyed our time there.

This blooming plant was amazing growing out of the rock on the very windy point above the lighthouse!

Walking back from the point - notice Rob's hood blowing to the right and the grass laid down by the wind. In the distance are the cliffs above Drakes Bay.

Deer on the cliffs above the Beach on the Ocean side of Point Reyes.

Looking down at the Elephant seals on the beach in Drakes Bay from the overlook spot near the Chimney Rock Trail head.

Here is a zoomed in picture of the seals on the beach.

And here is a distant shot of the lone male out in the water whose picture headlines this blog.

When I taught sixth grade I took my class each year on a field trip to Ano Nuevo State Beach to see the Elephant Seals there. We could get up relatively close to them with a docent guiding us. Recently I read Alta California, a book by Nick Neely. The book tells of the author's 2016 solo walk from San Diego to San Francisco following in the path of the 1769 expedition lead by Portola. It's a very interesting journey in which Neely shares excerpts from Crespi's journal, and compares and contrasts the locations as described in 1769 to today. (Crespi was the priest who accompanied Portola and recorded the journey.) One thing that caught my attention when reading the book was the numbers of Grizzly bears encountered by the Portola expedition and when Neely was at Ano Nuevo in 2016 with the Elephant Seals he shared that there would not have been any Elephant Seals there in 1769 because of the bears. Perhaps that is something we were told years ago when I was leading those school field trips, but I had forgotten. Until the Grizzlies were eliminated in California Elephant seals only visited islands and beaches surrounded by high cliffs. The seals would not have been at Drakes Bay in 1769 either.

A White-Crowned Sparrow wanting to share our lunch at a picnic table in front of the closed visitor center at Drakes Bay.

Another White-Crowned Sparrow

The big storm was predicted to hit on Tuesday evening and I wanted to see if we could see it coming in that morning over the Pacific so we hiked to Jewel Trail about two miles away to go up far enough (about another mile) to see out to Tomales Bay. I was disappointed that by the time we got there the whole sky was overcast so we couldn't see any storm approaching, but it was a still a nice hike.

Looking North East to Barnabe Peak and beyond from the Jewel Trail.

A pretty grove of trees down below the Jewel Trail.

Tuesday night was when the "atmospheric river" hit California and Wow! the rain really came down loudly on the roof of LesThora. Apparently there was a lot of wind after I fell asleep, and Rob heard it and felt the RV shake. In the morning we woke up to find our "Clam" tent turned upside down. It had been firmly staked, but if we'd realized that the wind would be so strong that night we would have taken it down. We have rarely felt much of any wind here in our little valley, even when the tops of the trees are being blown about.

The upside town tent.

We were amazed that the tent survived with no damage.

This "Clam" tent was pretty pricey, but I guess sometimes you get what you pay for.

Nevertheless we will be watching wind forecasts more closely in the future.

After we righted the tent on Wednesday morning I went for a walk exploring what else the night's storm had done. There were a few new branches down on the trails, but the wind storm the week before had cleared out most of the loose stuff. The creeks however had lots more water than we've seen thus far, and it was fun to look at and listen to them.

A redwood branch across the trail that I couldn't clear, but today Rob and I went back and together we were able to easily move it off the trail.

This was one of the branches I was able to get off the trail.

A creek right next to my morning bench on the Pioneer Tree Trail. Up until this week there has just been a bare trickle that was very quiet. Now there is lots of water in this little tributary making lots of noise as it approaches Lagunitas Creek.

Close up of part of the creek by "my" bench.

The swollen Lagunitas Creek. The water coming out of the pipe in the distance is coming from the little creek by the bench.

Yesterday we decided to go see if Stair Step Falls finally lived up to being called a water fall. The trail to it is across Sir Francis Drake Blvd. from the campground. The trailhead is about 1 1/2 miles from our campsite, and then it's another 1 1/2 miles to the falls.

Here is a glimpse at the "lime" green hills from the trail to Stair Step Falls.

Definitely more water in the falls than we'd seen previously.

A close up view of one of the "stair steps."

The falls were pretty, but with all the vegetation it's hard to get a good picture of them.

Every day, walking by the same trees on the same trails I see things differently, perhaps because there is more or less fog in the air, more or less sunlight, maybe because something new has sprouted or just because I see something new that has been there all along.